Saturday, 20 September 2014

The End.

The End. This is the
end, my only friend, the end…So sang Jim Morrison in the 1967 song bearing
that ominous title. Its initial release was too early for even me to remember
but the song is one of my cultural landmarks because of its use in Francis Ford
Coppola’s masterpiece Apocalypse Now – its
plangent tones accompanying the death of Colonel Kurtz, the music and lyrics
providing the perfect accompaniment to the striking imagery on screen.

That was thirty five years ago (yes, I know…) but it made
such an impact on me that I can’t help but hear the song whenever I hear those
two words. (Pavlov – and possibly his dogs – would be proud).

So yes, there it was, running through my head when I read
that the new novel from Gary McMahon shared that particular title. Whilst the song is
about the end of a relationship (and various oedipal fantasies…) the book is
about the end of the world – or at least mankind’s existence on it. It
describes present day events surrounding the appearance of a “suicide plague”
which compels huge swathes of the population to kill themselves – apocalypse
now indeed.

It’s a first person narrative – a device which works
brilliantly to convey the confusion as well as the horror of the situation and
which also means that there are no real explanations for why what is happening
is happening. There are hints and clues yes – a couple of the book’s most
effective set pieces describe the appearance of messages implying that someone is to blame – but anyone seeking
a full and detailed explanation will be disappointed. This is a good thing.

The narrator is Mack, in London on business when the plague
hits, hundreds of miles away from his blind and pregnant wife Kay who is back home
in their isolated cottage in Yorkshire. The bulk of the novel concerns Mack’s
journey back home, accompanied by a small group of fellow survivors and it’s
his determination to be reunited with the woman he loves that provides the
emotional core of the book.

The journey is, of course, fraught with difficulty and
danger. As if simply negotiating their way through traffic pile-ups caused by
the mass suicides wasn’t enough, the survivors also have to contend with the
“Leftovers” – zombies for all intents and purposes - who have become aggressors,
determined to take as many people with them as they can, oblivious to their own horrific injuries and who provide the book’s gross-out moments in abundance.
Much uncoiling of intestines is to be had…

The success of the book of course depends on the character
of Mack, its narrator, and Gary does a brilliant job of creating an everyman
that the reader can root for, enhancing that character with the romance between
him and his wife to whom he is desperate to return. It’s therefore an
incredibly bold move to, in a single scene, completely undermine the empathy
and trust the reader has invested in the character when he makes a decision to
follow a particular course of action.

It’s a move that works brilliantly though, shocking the
reader, unsettling them and leaving them uncertain right up until the end of
the book at which point context – of a sort – is provided. That’s not all the
ending provides although to say more would be unfair. It’s incredibly powerful
though, and deeply moving.

In the early days of this blog I referred to Gary McMahon as
“The King of Bleak”. Whilst this was meant as a compliment it could also be
seen as pigeon-holing or labelling –a suggestion that Gary is a “type” of writer. This, as anyone
who has read his work will know, is far from the truth but, I’ll tell you what,
if you do want bleak there aren’t
many better as The End convincingly demonstrates.

On the surface, The
End reads as an exciting horror novel – and can be enjoyed simply on that
basis - but there’s real depth here too with musings on humanity itself, (and not the more benevolent interpretations of the word) with suggestions that the plague is the ultimate outcome for mankind's greed and selfishness and the destruction they inevitably result in.

The End is evidence indeed that Gary's mojo is risin' and is published by Newcon Press. You can - and I thoroughly recommend that you should - buy it here.